RHINO 2002 - 9th Annual Member's Show - 8/11/02

Forgiveness
for L.H.
Patricia McMillen
© 2002

is a hard woman insisting I spend
New Year's Day writing an apology to her boyfriend

for things I don't recall saying the night before, and if I did --
hell, he was drunk too; holding up my karma as if she had

a direct line, knew even half
the things I've done wrong: breezing past Salv-

ation Army Santas, my pockets full of quarters; that day
I told the boss I was sick but just wanted to stay

home and watch TV; the sheepdog pup
I kicked. Forgiveness -- ah,

forgiveness: how I wish her love were sap
that never stopped flowing, that I could tap

her like a maple tree in winter, set
my empty bucket at an angle, let

not a single drop of her sweetness run
off, flow away, across the frozen ground.

previously published in RHINO 2002

Patricia McMillen is a poet, musician, and lawyer from Oak Park, IL. Her poems have appeared in RHINO, Third Coast, and Buckle& as well as in the Her Mark 2001 calendar published by Woman Made Gallery. McMillen is a 2002 IL Arts Council Fellow in Poetry, a three time winner of the Jo-Anne Hirshfield Memorial Poetry Award and has been a fellow at the Ragdale Foundation, a writers' retreat. A member of the Silvertones and Common Taters string bands, she plays clawhammer banjo and does piano and vocals. She is a part time student of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago and occasionally hears cases for the Cook County Mandatory Arbitrations program.